Glacier Country, New Zealand

It’s been raining quite a lot, which is OK since that’s what has created these amazing landscapes in the first place. We’re dealing with it. We stayed at an awesome park just outside the Franz Josef Glacier National Park, which is also basically on the beach (New Zealand, man)! Our first activity was to hike up to view the front edge of the glacier. The rain obscured it a bit, but it was still pretty cool… consider yourself punned.
Fording the glacier’s runoff.

Apparently, about 30 years ago the glacier was down in the flat section of the valley that we hiked through and you could climb onto it. Nowadays, the only way to actually get onto the glacier is via a $200 pp helicopter ride. We decided to view it from afar. So many waterfalls! Just about everywhere we looked in the valley there were long waterfalls tumbling down the mountainsides.

Priscilla and Kate made me a spice cake for my 31st 🙂 Most impressively, they did it with only a microwave! Kate’s high school home economics class still paying dividends? It also hailed like crazy right before we decided to do a hike.

Another day we hiked up towards, but not all the way to, Alex Knobb. We made it just past Christmas Lookout but the snow was a wee bit deeper than we expected…so we turned around. Amazing to see ferns and palm trees covered in snow… 😮 Great view of Franz Josef Glacier! It was clear enough that we could see the top of it as opposed to the rainy day before.

Franz Josef glacier again, with epic-er views as the reward for hiking 3 hrs vs 30 minutes.

Surrounded by snow covered trees, looking out over the Southern Alps, still able to see the beach through the clouds.

The “Great Coast Road” along the West Edge of New Zealand’s south island regularly makes the cut for top scenic drives in the world. We’re lucky to have the opportunity to spend this much time exploring it. We stopped by the Hokitika Gorge (with craze-mazing blue water), Monteith’s brewery, saw a glowworm dell, and saw blowholes at pancake rocks in Punakaiki.

These little birds (fantail birds, says Priscilla) are so curious. They’re like little fighter jets grabbing the (few) insects buzzing around our heads. All three of us managed to have one land on us at some point! It’s on the rock behind me here:

I’m just happy that something showed up on this picture of the glowworm dell. It looks like stars but these are the little glowing tail-lights of the glowworms:

Stopped at this viewpoint on the Okarito Trig Walk on the suggestion of some other travelers. So glad we did, from the top you get nearly 360 degree views of the Southern Alps and the coast line. We spent about 30 minutes sitting in silence just trying to take it all in, and listening to the morning chorus of birds. Eventually until another couple came up and we decided to let them have their own private viewing like us. Our pictures don’t do it justice, so we’ll have to remember it. But here’s the wetland boardwalk at the beginning of the track. 

Further up the coast, just as the sun was setting, we saw a beach with some tide pools…covered in starfish.

The pancake rocks, close to where we spent the night, look like stacks of pancakes (surprising, eh?). Going at high tide means we got to see some epic blowholes which created their own little rainbows! How are there are so many rainbows in New Zealand?

Kate managed to catch the creation of a rainbow from a blowhole and I’m ruthlessly stealing it to post here.

A lot of the trees along the coast are super windswept from gusts coming off the Tasman Sea. They grow straight up until they’re taller than the protective dunes, then they bend over.

Highlights of the Great Coast Road:

• Okarito Trig Walk, mostly the view from the top
• Seeing glowworms
• Snow on ferns and tromping through snow within view of a nice beach
• Blowholes and pancake rocks

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